Does the Editorial Board of the New York Times not read and think about what they take a stand on?
The Privilege to Speak
The New York Times Co. wants a monopoly on the Constitution.
By JAMES TARANTO - Wall Street Journal
A corporate division has once again exercised its
First Amendment rights to argue that corporations don't have First
Amendment rights. This time, however, the
New York Times Co. claims to have discovered a loophole that protects
its First Amendment rights.
In an editorial today, the Times Co.'s
eponymous flagship newspaper answers Justice Samuel Alito, who in a
terrific speech last week at the Federalist Society in Washington
penetratingly ("speciously," according to the Times) defended the
court's 2010 ruling in
Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission.
That 5-4 ruling struck down portions of two laws that imposed
government censorship on political speech by corporations and unions
(though they made an exception for "media corporations" such as the New
York Times Co. and News Corp., which publishes The Wall Street Journal
and this website).
Alito elaborated an argument
this column made
in January 2010, just after he and his colleagues handed down Citizens
United. He noted that many landmark free-speech decisions vindicated the
rights of corporations, including two that involved the New York Times
Co. Here's the company's response:
In New York Times v. Sullivan, in which the First
Amendment was used to rein in the law of libel, the Supreme Court
focused on the "profound national commitment to the principle that
debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust, and wide-open."
It made almost no mention of the fact that The Times was a corporation.
Nor were the free speech rights of a corporation any part of the ruling
in the Pentagon Papers case.
Really? The free speech rights of a corporation weren't "any part" of a case styled
New York Times Co. v. United States?
The rest of the story:
